measures
30 Second Tip: Seek out pain
Measure things that are not in control. Organisations tend to shy away from this, as the message initially looks grim. If you are trying to improve things then it’s essential to measure the things that are not working properly.
Building KPI Engagement
KPIs are like gym memberships… KPIs and measures are like scales and gym membership. They are great, but only if you use them (and regularly). No matter how good your management information system is, you must make sure that the team are engaged with it. This means The team use the system regularly to help…
Team Efficiency and Cognitive Dissonance in the Workplace
What happens when you adjust metrics and targets to be more realistic, but it leaves your workforce feeling like they’re suddenly underperforming, even though their actual performance hasn’t changed at all? In today’s data-driven world, metrics and targets are the bedrock of organisational performance. But what happens when these measures don’t tell the full story?…
Do You Work for an Idiot?
Here is a process improvement idea for you. It is called “poke yoke”. I am told that that is Japanese for “making things easy to get right and difficult to get wrong”. It is a rather grand name for what my old boss used to call “idiot proofing”. Let me give you an example: think…
How to get a perfect quality score in 24 hours…
Many KPIs and targets can be an invitation for creative dishonesty. How do you make sure you don’t accidentally drive self defeating behaviours?
Why some KPIs are like pasta makers
We keep things for lots of reasons. Understanding why we hang on to kitchen gadgets we never use can help us work out tactics for getting rid of unused KPIs.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves
New research shows that we can be tricked into assuming there’s a link between activity and outcomes. Is blind optimism leading your business down a dead end?
How to measure the “unmeasurable”
I’m often told that some things are impossible to measures. It’s true that some things are much less obvious but there are some pretty ingenious ways around this. If you can’t measure something directly then you can look for “coincident” events or activities. What am I gibbering on about? Let me give you an example:…